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| Afghan Supreme Council to Be Convened within Days |
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FRI, OCT 19, 2001
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A meeting of the Supreme Council of representatives of Afghan groups which would lay the foundation of a post-Taliban state will probably be convened within a few days, Italian Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Margherita Boniver said in Rome Thursday.
Italy has been at the center of intense diplomatic initiatives which have seen Afghan groups rallying round former king Zahir Shah, who has been living in exile in Rome since 1973, after being deposed in a coup by pro-Moscow leftists.
Italy has offered to host the meeting of the council and Boniver said a date for its convocation might be set "within a couple of days."
Representatives of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in the country's north and the ex-king agreed on October 1 to call a Supreme Council of tribal elders which would mark a "new start" for war-ravaged Afghanistan.
The council will then convene the Loya Jirga, or Grand Council of leaders of all the country's ethnic and tribal groupings, to discuss the ousting of the Taliban and the setting up of a moderate government in Kabul. According to seated tribal tradition, the Loya Jirga must be held in Afghanistan.
Boniver said the meeting would be held in Rome under the aegis of the United Nations and would serve as "a sort of embryo that would shape the political future of the country after the Talibans."
She also said that Italy has earmarked 1 billion lire for a project specifically meant to help Afghan women. It will be given to non-governmental organizations experienced with the issue, Boniver said.
"We can do a lot to help Afghan women, the most important of which is to help defeat the Taliban regime, zealots who interpret the Koran according to their own thwarted phobias and who have nothing in common with Islam. They have reduced Afghan women to a state of absolute slavery," Boniver said.
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